Despite its long history of encounters with colonialism, slavery, and neocolonialism, Panama continues to be an under-researched site of African Diaspora identity, culture, and performance. To address this void, Renee Alexander Craft examines an Afro-Latin Carnival performance tradition called Congo as it is enacted in the town of Portobelo, Panamathe nexus of trade in the Spanish colonial world. In "When the Devil Knocks: The Congo Tradition and the Politics of Blackness in Twentieth-Century Panama, "Alexander Craft draws on over a decade of critical ethnographic research to argue that Congo traditions tell the story of "cimarronaje," charting self-liberated Africans triumph over enslavement, their parody of the Spanish Crown and Catholic Church, their central values of communalism and self-determination, and their hard-won victories toward national inclusion and belonging."""When the Devil Knocks" analyzes the Congo tradition as a dynamic cultural, ritual, and identity performance that tells an important story about a Black cultural past while continuing to create itself in a Black cultural present. This book examines Congo within the history of twentieth century Panamanian "etnia negra" culture, politics, and representation, including its circulation within the political economy of contemporary tourism."